Whenever the Abolitionists mention about
innocent people who had been freed from death row, they never want to mention
anything about repeat offenders. There is one man who was released from death
row and has been able to go free and kill again. Not at all a good propaganda
tool for Abolitionists who want to use the term, ‘innocent on death row’ to
fool the public into preserving killers. The next time, if any abolitionists
want to mention innocent on death row, tell them about Joseph Green Brown, I
got the information and photo from crimelibary.
September
18, 2012 8:33 PM By Cora Van Olson
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Joseph Green
Brown, 62, spent 13 years of his life fighting a 1973 conviction for the rape
and murder of Earlene Treva Barksdale, a crime for which Florida sentenced
him to death. In 1973 Brown was only 23 and a drifter. He had come to the
attention of investigators for confessing to to sexually abusing a woman during
the commission of a robbery at the Tampa airport the same day as the murder.
When Barksdake’s husband passed a lie-detector test, suspicion shifted to
Brown. On appeal Brown’s conviction was overturned in 1986 based on
evidence that prosecutors had allowed a co-defendant to perjure himself.
Prosecutors could have retried Brown, but in 1987 opted instead to release him.
A free
man, Brown found God, changed his name to Shabaka, and, as a motivational
speaker, spoke out against the death penalty, retelling many times the story of
how his execution was stayed just 15 hours before it was scheduled. The Daily Mail quoted an interview in which Brown
said, “I’m against killing, period, whether the violence is by individuals, the
state, or armies in warfare. All life is sacred.”
In a turn of
events that has shocked his friends and family, however, Brown was placed under
arrest in North Carolina on September 14, 2012, for the first-degree murder of
his wife of 20 years, Mamie Caldwell Brown, 71, whose body was discovered in
their home on September 13, after police were called to check on her. Marcus Williams, a cousin of Mamie Brown, told reporters
that the couple seemed happy and that her family didn’t worry about Brown’s
past, adding, “He didn’t seem like a threat. He was upfront about everything.
He was always smiling and trying to help people. He was a motivational speaker.
He liked to warn people what could happen in the legal system.” Joyce Robbins,
another relative of Mamie’s, said that she stared at Brown in the courtroom and
that “He had a blank look. I don’t know that person. I’ve never seen him
before.”
Brown will be
held without bond until a preliminary hearing on September 26, 2012. It is
hoped that prosecutors in North Carolina will handle Mamie Brown’s case more
competently than Florida officials handled that of Barksdale thirty-nine years
ago.
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/freed-from-death-row-he-faces-a-new-murder-charge/1253380
Freed
from death row, he faces a new murder charge
Tuesday,
September 25, 2012 7:13pm
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Joseph Green Brown was released from prison in
1987. Since then he has worked as a truck driver and a homeless shelter cook.
He now stands accused of killing his wife in South Carolina. (SOURCE: http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/freed-from-death-row-he-faces-a-new-murder-charge/1253380)
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A
black man named Joseph Green Brown was accused of raping and killing a white
woman in 1973 in a Tampa clothing store called the Just Kids Shoppe. He was
found guilty and sentenced to death. Fitted for a burial suit. Granted a stay
some 15 hours before his scheduled electrocution in 1983. He was set free in
1987.
In
the years since then, Brown worked as a truck driver, a homeless shelter cook,
a convenience store clerk. He got married. He moved from Washington, D.C., to Charlotte,
N.C. He talked to church groups about staying out of trouble.
Last
week he was picked up by police in his hometown of Charleston, S.C., after his
wife was found dead in their apartment in Charlotte.
He's 62. He has a court hearing today. He's facing
a first-degree murder charge.
• • •
In July 1973, Earlene Treva Barksdale was found in
her shop dead on the floor, naked with a bullet hole in her head.
Later the same afternoon, Brown, who was 23 at the
time and had no criminal record, flagged down a Tampa police car. He wanted to
confess to a robbery. He told officers he and another man broke into a Holiday
Inn by the airport and robbed a woman and that he had started to molest her
before stopping. The other man's name, he said, was Ronald Floyd.
A detective thought there might be a link between
the two crimes. He asked Brown and Floyd if they knew anything about the
Barksdale murder. Brown said no. Floyd, eventually, said yes — that he only
drove, that Brown fired the shot.
The murder trial was "the biggest thing going
on," attorney J. Michael Shea said this week. He was Brown's
court-appointed attorney. "All the news. All the television
stations."
The prosecutor, Robert Bonanno, had Floyd's
testimony, but that was about it. No fingerprints. No matching blood. The
bullet that killed Barksdale couldn't have come from the gun Brown had used in
the hotel robbery, but Bonanno told the jury it was the murder weapon.
Shea asked Floyd at the trial if he was getting a
deal from prosecutors for his testimony against Brown. Floyd said no.
The all-white jury quickly found Brown guilty.
Brown got 20 years for the robbery on top of his death sentence. Floyd got
probation.
Shea still thinks Brown was innocent.
"As far as I'm concerned, he was always
guilty," said Bonanno, who became a judge and was the subject of a series
of ethics investigations before resigning in 2001 to stop another.
• • •
Floyd got in trouble shortly after the trial and
went to prison. He told Shea in 1975 in a sworn statement that his testimony
was false and that he had lied in exchange for "favorable
consideration" from the prosecution.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund took
over Brown's appeal in 1981. Florida Gov. Bob Graham rejected Brown's plea for
clemency in 1982. He signed his death warrant in 1983.
Brown kicked and screamed when they came to measure
him for that suit. He was asked what he wanted for his last meal. He said he
wanted nothing.
The stay came the night before he was to be killed.
The federal appeal court overturned his conviction
because Bonanno had "knowingly used false testimony" — a reference to
Floyd's lie about his deal with prosecutors.
Hillsborough County prosecutors determined there
was insufficient evidence to retry Brown. Brown was mopping the floor at the
county jail when he got a call saying he was free. He was released with the 75
cents from his personal prison account.
"I can't tell you he was wrongly
imprisoned," said Henry Lavandera, the prosecutor who dropped the case.
"All I can tell you is that I couldn't prove that he was guilty."
In 1999, Brown, who started going by Shabaka
WaQlimi, Swahili for "uncompromising," told a Times reporter
he was still bitter.
"You've got to realize, you put a man in a
cage and treat him like a dog, talk to him like a dog, feed him like a dog …
there's gonna come a time he wants to bite like a dog."
Ten years after that, in a talk with a group of
students, one of them asked if he was "healed."
"I'm healed enough to control those emotions,
but I still possess those emotions," he said.
"When I talk to audiences … I ask them to pray
for me. And the reason why I ask them to pray for me is that I know that one
day all these emotions is gonna swell up. And I ask people to pray for Shabaka
that when that day come I be by myself."
• • •
Charlotte police received calls almost two weeks
ago from people who were worried about Mamie Caldwell Brown. They went to check
on her.
Police say she suffered unspecified trauma.
The retired secretary was 71.
At a hearing last week, Joseph Green Brown had on
handcuffs and an orange jail jumpsuit. He took a quick look at his wife's
family and then turned away.
• • •
Shea kept in touch with Brown. He wrote a book
about Brown. He exchanged Christmas cards with Brown. He knew his wife. He
talked with them on the phone, at least a couple times a year. He said they'd
been having a tough time financially.
"I think it's sad," Shea said, "if
Joe actually killed his wife. That's very sad. He should pay the consequences
if he did it.
"I don't know the circumstances," he
added. "Probably only two people do. And one of them is dead."
News researchers Carolyn Edds,
Caryn Baird and Natalie Watson contributed to this report, which used
information from the Los Angeles Times, the Charlotte Observer and the
Associated Press. Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@tampabay.com or (727)
893-8751.
Freed from death row, he faces a new murder charge
09/25/12 [Last modified: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 10:01pm]
CHECK
THIS VIDEO TO SEE ONE OF HIS SPEECHES:
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